1. Field of the Invention
My invention relates generally to animal feed trough dividers and is more particularly directed to a manger divider for preventing an animal from eating feed intended for other animals feeding in adjacent stalls in a feeding area.
2. Description of the Prior Art.
Traditionally dairy cows have been fed in long, u-shaped feed troughs generally extending the length of the barn or animal housing area and located directly in front of and perpendicular to the stanchions in which the cows are secured for feeding. milking, etc. Therefore, the feed troughs extend from one cow's stanchion to the adjacent cow's areas and so forth down the row of cows without any delineation as to the end of one cow's feeding area and the beginning of the next cow's feeding area. The farmer distributes food such as roughage, silage, feed supplement or the like in the trough dispersing the food between the cows manually as the farmer progresses along the length of the feed trough. Each cow receives approximately the same amount of feed with this method. Once an individual cow has been secured in a particular stanchion, the range of motion of the cow's head is vertically and horizontally limited, thereby also limiting access to feed in the feed trough to only that area of the feed trough which the cow can reach. Even with that limitation, cows will generally stretch to reach the outer limits of their range to access additional feed. Due to the close proximity of the stalls and stanchions of one dairy cow to adjacent dairy cows while secured in their stanchions, there is frequently an effective overlap of one cow's feeding area with the next cow's feeding area. This can be a problem if the feed of a particular cow is a special mix, contains medicine or is specially adapted to a particular animal for any reason. Therefore, the capability of individualizing the feeding of each cow has distinct advantages. The advent of computerized milking and feeding operations, in which an individual cow's feed ration is allotted relative to that cow's milk production, has amplified the need for a reliable, simple to install inexpensive. lightweight, easily cleanable manger divider which can separate the single communal feed troughs found in most barns into smaller, individual trough areas.
Other patents have disclosed various mounting brackets and devices and are listed herewith:
______________________________________ U.S. Letters Pat. No. Inventor ______________________________________ 567,116 Bailey 2,727,712 Holmboe 3,143,331 Corey 3,568,797 Hardy 3,776,498 Peters et al 4,219,285 Hayashi 4,341,029 Heard ______________________________________
However, none of the above-mentioned patents disclose a manger divider similar to the present invention.